


Ápeiros

by ticoyuu



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2
Genre: M/M, Sad with a Happy Ending, a couple OC kids but only 1 of em is sorta relevant, alcor/hibiki are like platonic life partners here, and they were ROOM MATES (but in the stratum) dot txt, depending on your definition of happy i guess, hibiyama forms a big chunk of background but yamato's not actually present, mentions of fumi/makoto and daichi/io
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 20:35:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15323784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ticoyuu/pseuds/ticoyuu
Summary: "Hey, where was the error? When did I start doing the wrong thing?"Hibiki Kuze, Administrator of Worlds and Lord of the Stratum, falls into anguish and the cards fall inverted. (A slightly darker examination of Hibiki the hero.)





	Ápeiros

**Author's Note:**

> good mornin hoes ok so heres a rough timeline:  
> -yesterday, ass o clock: i send my alcor stanning friend some alcor MMDs i just discovered the existence of, feeling a lot like alcor discovering human potential was there all along  
> -yesterday, ass o clock +2: i pass the fuck out  
> -this morning and by that i mean 5pm: i wake up and think about alcor  
> -roughly now-ish: i am here and i am posting my hibiki character study through alcor's eyes and i henpecked it 1 letter at a time on my tablet with my ass planted on the toilet lid and theres no AC and im gonna cry if i get carpal tunnel from THIS and not like. art which is my main thing and then i proofed it on pc and like fuck i gotta start using gdrive instead of android notes //sobs
> 
> rambling aside pls enjoy this (imo) Fre hs Hibs bc ive seen like hibs's fridge horror potential explored like literally never but i mean with this dude, i cant blame em i mean like hes a Good Boye and doesnt DESERVE t _[i am forcefully removed from the premises]_

_Hey, where was the error? When did I start  doing the wrong thing?_

Hibiki Kuze-- Administrator of Worlds and Lord of the Stratum-- asks, one day, in a voice that cracks in the middle of a hollow laugh. Alcor sees himself in that anguish, the shadow of his doubts in the self-imposed cage that now, ironically, the Shining One inhabits.

 

_Hey, Al, how'd we even get to this point...?_

The smile is forced and Hibiki's jaw is set too hard and his eyes shimmer but don't overflow, and Alcor finds himself (once again) moved by Hibiki Kuze's strength of will. So Alcor soothes him the way Hibiki soothed his friends in a time long gone, and perhaps a part of the Administrator's body remembers human warmth even if his mind had forgotten; and so Alcor comes and holds Hibiki gently, then tightly, without doubt.

Hibiki cries then, sobbing, clutching to Alcor's thin arms like a child. As the leader from ages past, he couldn't be weak. If everyone else came to him for comfort, as the leader, he had to provide. That was all he could do, and it was his _duty_ , even if it was so, terribly lonely.

 

This has become the routine: weekly, sometimes daily, of two individuals of varying humanity with too much time, too much pain and for one of them, too many regrets. Alcor holds his friend's shaking body and Hibiki calms down, then they remain like that. Alcor cards slender fingers through curly, bright black hair that by human rights, should have lost its shine and its shade over a century ago, and Hibiki Kuze, Administrator of Worlds and Lord of the Stratum, does not attempt to run from the deluge of feelings and memories, doubts and regrets, anguish, because he's begun to cherish that helpless feeling when it visits to consume. It reminds him that humans are like this; that humans are weak, and that no matter what choices he made for "everyone's" sake, he's human, too.

When he can forget who he is and whatever's happening, letting himself quake and cry while held by someone's warmth, he feels safe even through his hurting, and because of that, he eventually wipes his face and stands again.

 

There are lifetimes he's lost, lonely on the leader's throne they called _Akasha_ _Stratum,_ and this-- this was his choice, that he'd taken upon himself for the sake of his friends. He would gladly sacrifice his life and humanity if it was for them --at the time, he had truly believed that was all it was and his intentions nothing less than noble.

 

.

.

.

Sometimes now that he's no longer human, Hibiki thinks about the parallels between himself and Yamato that he hadn't been able to see while walking in his own shoes. Yamato was a gifted leader who had, for all his sharp-fanged, biting authority, never held any pretenses. When he acknowledged someone's power, he treated them like an equal. Despite how his dream had ended; despite the fact he'd screamed, guttural and hoarse, that he'd slit the throats of _these_ _fools_ clinging to a rotten world, he was not a leader who enjoyed playing pretend -- even if his subordinates did not understand him, or hated him, even; that was who Yamato Hotsuin was: a born, rightful leader down to every cell in his body.

That was how Yamato Hotsuin led, and by contrast, Hibiki Kuze had been pitiful, a liar and a fool. Hibiki Kuze was average and unassuming: a leader only by chance _(should it_ _have been Daichi, who was ready to trade  his life for his friends' and rammed a truck_ _into Dubhe on the very first day?)_ who  desperately clung to the role, offering  empty comfort while believing, holding so  tightly to the idea that because everyone  loved him, because he comforted  everyone, because he led everyone to  battle, that he was someone special. That  as the _leader_ , he was somehow special and so he had to keep his own troubles at arm's length, because if he could not be strong, everything would fall apart.

Delusions; immaturity, pretenses and a savior complex -- he'd been having (perhaps for this entire time, and then time again that he shouldn't have gotten) the midsummer night's dream of a child.

 

Fate was funny like that: despite his best intentions, or maybe  _because_ of them, history was repeating itself and a small band of humans took up the torch he'd long ago set down and brought it to face the Lord of the Stratum.

 

.

.

.

A day passes, or perhaps an eternity, and the children of Hibiki Kuze's old friends' line come to demand an audience with the Lord of the Stratum. 

Through the Administrator's eyes, he sees their history -- the young man leading these seven individuals had been born twenty-four years and two months plus a handful of days ago, he'd seen hardship and betrayal and had been told from birth that he was not who he was, yet had bared his weakness to his friends and emerged only stronger; because he had been raised by his grandmother named Miyako on stories of his brave and fearsome grand-uncle who had traveled the world, never marrying nor bowing to anyone, and because he owed so much to the daughter of Makoto Sako and Fumi Kanno who'd mentored him (who had given him a suit when as a child he'd cried, seeking comfort before his first Hotsuin gala and his lips were teeth-marked, holding back tears with _I hate dresses!_ bitten back on his tongue), and whose memory he now cherishes--

\--And Hibiki stops himself there, he _has_ to, before he  (Administrator of Worlds and Lord of the  Stratum) crumples and gives in to the  surge of feelings right then and there. But  _oh,_ those are Daichi's laidback eyes  carrying Io's incredible perception set in  the face of a young man (who looks like them _both_ ) bearing a still- bleeding scar standing next to this generation's Hotsuin scion. And his eyes come to rest  next on Koharu herself, Otome's daughter  who had once been a little girl half his age and that was how he'd known her, the bright-eyed child who called him handsome and he'd thought to himself  _How precocious_ , and she is here before him now grey and frail; cane-bound with age. But Hibiki has no doubts she's the steel backbone of this group, the mother figure of this ragged group who supports them with fire and steel and then gentle teasing and warmth, and when her golden eyes so like her mother's narrow at Hibiki in the same way, and there, there it is--

\--He can see the exact moment the data overwrite he'd patched in ages ago with shaky, still-human hands shatters and _fa_ _ils_ ; the moment his perfect patch corrupts and the Records instantly cleanse the broken data. It's the exact moment this elderly Koharu breathes a sharp inhale and Hibiki Kuze, Administrator of Worlds and Lord of the Stratum, loses his composed facade and the tears flow freely, outside of his control.

It's burningly frustrating, and he feels helpless and maybe a little bitter, but he feels more human than he has in decades while standing face to face with the children of his friends, choking out sobs intermittent with laughter, shoulders shuddering but he stands tall without hiding his very human weakness.

 

Alcor finds him beautiful and radiant like this, and renews his conviction to carry out his Shining One's last request -- when he, Hibiki Kuze, Administrator of Worlds and Lord of the Stratum, falls in battle against humanity's unified will, holding his shepherd's role to the very end, that Al Saiduq would accompany them to Canopus and destroy it. With the human power the children had nurtured and bolstered with the Administrator's right and assistance; Hibiki would support humanity's struggle against the Universe itself once again. The night before the children had arrived, he'd called Al Saiduq by name with the most bare and heartfelt of thank-you's in his smile, and passed him the bulk of his-- the Administrator of Worlds and Lord of the Stratum's-- power along with his mission, and Al Saiduq held it close and knew he'd been right to shelter hope even in the darkest times, because even when he was hurting and lashed out, his Shining One's deepest desire; lifelong goal and missive  _(id, purpose)_  had remained true.

 

And when the chips fall just as Hibiki Kuze, consummate strategist and leader above all, had predicted, Al Saiduq adds one last wish of his own. It's an exercise in free will just as his Shining One had taught him and so he tells them all, posthumously, about the leader and human being Hibiki Kuze, irreplaceable companion of their parents, had been.

When Akito Hotsuin glances back at him intently, Al Saiduq is at a very human loss until the young man addresses him directly and thanks him with too-sharp perception that's softened by understanding, and he processes for a moment then realizes perhaps he shouldn't expect any less from the man descended from his Shining One's closest partner and Al Saiduq settles for feeling surprised but pleased and gives his best enigmatic smile in return.

The journey to Canopus feels like the path he once walked, to the Stratum to overturn Polaris and then Arcturus in a third life. He's still with friends and he feels like he's known them forever, and sometimes he gets caught for a moment in nostalgia. One day when Al Saiduq fades in from nowhere and says that once, someone joked that they should bell him like a cat, the grandmotherly Koharu narrows her eyes at him and whacks his rear with her cane and tells him to pay elders respect rather than heart attacks. Al Saiduq laughs then, and the sound is clear and tinkling like a bell and the friendly, close-knit group that accepted him as their own joins in and _oh,_ he hopes the sound carries to Canopus, because this is the grand orchestra of human feelings that Stars like them could never understand only looking and shepherding from a distance.

 

.

.

.

_"Thank you for telling us about the man in my grand-uncle's stories. He never mentioned names, but I'm certain now the man he'd loved beyond life and never let himself forget was Hibiki."_

_At that, Al Saiduq is a little puzzled  because as inexperienced as Hibiki had  been at the time, freshly ascended, he had still carried out a  full overwrite. But moments later he  forgets about it while simultaneously committing it to  memory; because this, for certain, is the  limitless human potential that bloomed  from seeds he himself planted during  humanity's dawn and were nurtured by Hibiki  some hundred-odd years ago. Now tall  and radiant and proud, humanity no  longer has need for shepherds above them in the  Stars or walking as one of their own like Hibiki._

_Al Saiduq's power inherited from Hibiki  fades when Canopus is finally surpassed by  human potential, but he dies at peace with  his second death; he passes on surrounded by friends  like the first time and his starshine eyes close forever with an  expression of warm satisfaction, because after so many eras and mistakes and lifetimes lived more than once , the last bit of his anguish can at last, be laid to rest._

**Author's Note:**

> the timeline in this fic doesnt add up like at all but weve already established im gay and cant do math and i also never was taught it in a fun learning environment (d&d) so let me r e s t
> 
> additionally i realized literally 3/4 through proofing on pc that canopus has to die in admin ending as well soo lets just uuh. pretend hibs/alcor sat his ass on the heavenly throne and canopus was like o ok. long as u do the job ig
> 
> im always a slut for discussion on whatever or alternatively being shot with angry tear-laden water guns is good too so like blease dont be afraid to talk tme!! nya


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